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He didn't want his mother to die.
It was typical that she did, because he wished it upon her more than once, on nights when she came home high and smacked him around. He would yell awful things at her and she would yell back shit just as ugly. A few times he would yell, "I wish you would fucking die!" or something whiney like that.
He didn't mean it.
When she died, it seemed sudden, because she fell off the wagon and hit the pipe all at once, in the span of a few months. He has dirty memories of walking into the living room and seeing her doing something with her hands and a lighter, and with pinches of things that he wasn't allowed to even look at. She never told him to get lost when he would sit down to watch his cartoons and she went about her little, methodical business. He didn't really understand what she was doing back then, but he can remember that watching her was like finding his dad's porn, and it held a deep seeded pervertedness, an intimacy that he had no right to discover at that age. If he closes his eyes and thinks hard about it, which he tries not to, he can smell the sugary, paint thinner, burning smell that went up in the living room air, and he can hear Spongebob's laughter mixing with the endless flick of the Bic lighter.
Sometimes he walks around and avoids the cracks in the sidewalk, thinking about that rhyme "step on a crack, break your momma's back", even though crack broke his mom a long time ago.
She was cooking up her little cocktails on square pieces of cut up beer cans. He remembers finding them all over the house, little metal squares all sticky and scorched black. First, it was a bit of crack- her old friend, no big deal cause everyone did a bit of blow and a bit of crack once and a while, but then she started adding H to it sometime around February, and then in March she was going from crack to smack to crystal until all three ended up in a needle, and she was withering away.
By April, she was dead and Terry found her, but it was a closed casket, so Mickey never saw her body.
There are other things he didn't want. Other regrets.
He didn't want to go to Juvie the first time.
His leg hurt like a bitch and they were weaning him off the percocets, and he needed a smoke, and his chest ached more than any bullet wound could, which scared him, and then silent, fat, hot tears got eaten up by the thin pillow before more could be shed. You had to be dead quiet on your first night in the joint, cause if anyone caught you crying, you might as well tattoo "bitch" on your forehead.
He doesn't like new places and all he had to go on was his brother's advice: don't act like a pussy; don't cover your junk in the shower like a pussy either; make sure you give a beatdown within the first three days, but pay the guard off so you don't fuck up your behavior; you can get smokes from the Micks and the Skinheads, but stay the fuck away from the Crypts; don't fuck with any Italians just in case; if you're horny, don't be a bitch, always do the fucking. Mickey chuckled and called Iggy a faggot when he said this, but Iggy shrugged it off, and Mickey was a little fucked up over how he was allowed to fuck a guy as long as it was behind bars.
And he didn't even fuck anyone in juvie anyway.
He was glad to get out in the summer, because the only outdoor time you got in juvie was in the fenced off concrete yard. The snow had fallen and melted by then, and he missed winter and spring entirely while he was away, but it didn't matter that much because there's so much tense air in the joint, it's always fucking winter.
And he didn't want to go back to juvie the second time either, but he didn't want to kill Frank Gallagher even more.
He talks a lot of shit, but he's never actually murdered anyone. He's seen a few murders out of the corner of his eye, but pretty much everyone in this shit hole has. And there's a semi-repressed memory in the back of his mind of Terry dragging something heavy out the back door of their house (but Mickey always managed to convince himself it was just a deer). He remembers following Frank, and how the gun was a thousand pounds, and how it would have been so easy, and how many goddamn times has he fired shots right on target underneath the El? Except it wasn't easy, and he leaned over that garbage can, wanting to be sick.
He just didn't want his dad to ever find out.
While it was happening, all he felt was fear. Fear that Terry was going blow Gallagher away with that gat; fear that his dad would cave in his skull and call him a fag until he drowned in the words.
Blind fucking fear.
Endless fucking humiliation. He didn't have skin. He was torn open and his dad saw everything that was wrong inside him
Out of all the things Mickey didn't ever want to do, he mostly didn't want to fuck that Russian whore. He didn't want to come hard and painfully in her while Gallagher watched.
Gallagher started putting his clothes, shaking the whole time, and the Russian started to put her clothes on, too, and it was kind of poetic in some distant way. Terry held the gun aloft the whole time until Gallagher had his foot out the door. He didn't look back at Mickey, and Mickey didn't want him to.
But now that it's over, all he feels is an odd sense of relief.
It's only been three days, and his face is healing nicely, which he's grateful for.
And his chest has stopped aching, replaced by a nice warm numbness.
And he smokes another cigarette.
And he smokes another joint.
And he's straight now, because she fucked him straight, but Terry doesn't need to know any more than that.
So he goes to see Gallagher at that prison-like group home, and sends him a text letting him know that he's outside. It takes about ten minutes for Ian to find a way out of the lockup, but eventually the back door opens.
Mickey sees Lip first, holding open the door, and their eyes meet for a split second before Gallagher comes out. Mickey knows that Lip knows everything when he sees him because it's in his eyes. Mickey is starting to accept that his secrets aren't secrets anymore.
The door closes and Gallagher stands about five feet from him with his hands in his pockets. He looks sleepy.
He doesn't say anything, just starts walking, assured by the footsteps behind him that Gallagher has followed. They get halfway through a dark side street alley where you can't see out in either direction. Gallagher stops him with his hand, and then pushes him against the brick softly- too softly for what they're used to. They kiss for the second time and it physically hurts. It hurts in every way.
Gallagher clings to him and tries to hug him, and Mickey pushes him off, but he keeps coming back like an annoying dog until Mickey just goes limp and lets him.
He smells like teenage sweat and cigarettes.
"Go to the cops. You'll get put in the group home with me," Gallagher says real quiet.
Mickey thinks that's a stupid idea.
"It's done. Don't matter."
"You don't have to live there."
Mickey pushes him off and steps away.
He paces a few times while Gallagher watches, always so fucking still and reserved. He wishes he didn't have that thing in him that makes him jumpy and wily and wanna set shit on fire. He wishes he was calm like Gallagher, who can line up a long distance rifle shot for ten minutes, just breathing and eyeing up the target. Mickey just wants to squeeze the trigger and bam bam bam hit everything at once.
Gallagher's the best fuck he's ever had because he's calm and slow and he works it until Mickey's eyes water and he can't feel anything but pure, fiery death in his veins, until his head and his dick explode.
He's the only guy he's ever kissed, and he'll probably be the only guy who he ever will.
"You're probably the worst thing that's ever fuckin' happened to me, you know?" he says.
And it's true, Gallagher knows it and it shows in his face, the regret and the remorse that Mickey doesn't want to see.
But they still fuck quickly in the alleyway with their pants around their ankles, and their grunts all hushed, and they still kiss hurtfully, and breathy, and stubbly, the way a kiss should be.
There's a world where you can't always get what you want, and all that shit. Mickey feels it every day, all the things he didn't want.
But he always wanted this.